Review: Addiction by Gene Heyman

IN 1942, doctors sitting on the Research Council on Problems of Alcohol found themselves powerless to resolve America’s confusions about alcoholism. The repeal of Prohibition laws had taken chronic drunkenness off the police blotter, but physicians were unable to claim it as their territory. Instead they were losing out to the temperance-minded clergy and other public scolds who had inspired the introduction of Prohibition.

So the doctors turned to a higher power&colon; Dwight Anderson, head of the National Association of Publicity Directors. Anderson’s diagnosis …